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January 23, 2012

Demoralisation or disorientation? Causes of the Split in the WP

This is part of an ongoing discussion among Workers Party comrades and doesn’t necessarily reflect an agreed position.

“Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period as bystanders. When a program or an organisation wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalised by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.”

-Trotsky, The Transitional Program
The resignation of four senior WP comrades on the eve of our January 2011 Retreat probably came as a shock to most of the Party. Those comrades announced that they would abandon any claim to the Party in favour of setting up a theoretical and international solidarity focused blog. Ian Anderson’s discussion bulletin “On the Party Question” did a good job of analysing their collective statement of resignation. In this bulletin, I intend to further probe the reasons behind the split.
Continue reading “Demoralisation or disorientation? Causes of the Split in the WP”

January 21, 2012

Occupy Nigeria leads to general strike

Despite its obvious inspiration in the Arab Spring, the global Occupy Movement is most prominent in relatively wealthy countries. This does not mean the movement has not appealed to those in the global south- often Occupy protests have not taken place in these countries because social movements with their own identities were already in progress when people in New York started camping out on Wall Street. Rather than being sneered at however the Occupy Movement has been welcomed as a showing of solidarity. Indian activist Arundati Roy told an audience in New York;
“The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don’t know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.”
The show of solidarity with activists in the developing and under developed world could be why socialists and labour activists in Nigeria decided to adopt the name ‘Occupy Nigeria’ for the protests they began in January this year.
Background
There are many reasons for Nigerians to protest. Despite being one of the worlds biggest oil exporters (the largest in Africa) much of the population lives on less than US$2 a day. Corruption is rife in the government, infrastructure is badly maintained and food prices are on the rise. Despite all this, mass protests were not expected by many commentators. “even though Nigeria is just a few hours flight from Egypt or Libya, no one believed for a moment that the winds of change would reach Africa’s most populous nation.” wrote Michael Bociurkiw, a Canadian journalists who was in Nigeria during the Arab Spring.
That all changed when the Nigerian government announced on January 1^st that it was ending a fuel subsidy resulting in a doubling of fuel and transport prices. The result of this was that many Nigerians could not afford to get to work, or power the generators that are relied on because of a blackout prone electricity system, The ending of subsidized fuel was the spark that set things aflame .
Protests and general strike
Following the announcement protesters shut down petrol stations and blockaded highways. Nigerias union movement called for an indefinite general strike on January 9^th. Chris Uyot of the Nigeria Labour Congress told the BBC “We have the total backing of all Nigerian workers on this strike and mass protest”. Thousands gathered daily in Gani Fawehinmi Park in Lagos. The gathering in the park featured speeches by labour leaders and civil society activists, as well as, artists’ performances.
After a week the general strike achieved a partial victory, with president President Goodluck Jonathan announcing a cut in fuel prices, although it fell short of the previous subsidy.

The role of imperialism
The reason behind the ending of fuel subsidies was repaying public debt. Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, visited Nigeria in December and around the same time the World Bank sent its executive director Nguzi Okonjko-Iwela to take over as the country’s finance minister. She was also made co-ordinating minister of the economy, a portfolio created especially for her.
Nigeria has borrowed vast amounts of money to fund the infrastructure required to obtain and export its oil reserves, yet it sees very little of the wealth the stems from the oil industry. Much of the media converge has pointed out the cost the general strike has had to the economy- estimates range in the billions- but rarely is it noted that the average Nigerian hasn’t missed out on any of this money, instead the ones missing out are Shell, Chevron, Agip and Total.
Further reading: Occupy Nigeria Takes On Nigeria’s Occupiers

January 21, 2012

Mana: We Support the Wharfies

“MANA supports wholeheartedly the rights of the wharfies who work for the Port of Auckland,” states MANA leader Hone Harawira. Harawira says “Workers across the country need to wake up and smell the coffee – if the wharfies lose this fight then the casualisation of working hours will become a permanent feature of employment in this country. Everybody who earns a low to middle income job will have to wait by their phones for their boss to call to see if they are working or not, not knowing how many hours they will work and be paid for each week.”
“As a country we should be doing our utmost to back our wharfies. Despite the efforts of National and the country’s media to make this dispute about money, this is all about having reliable and stable employment. The workers want to know that they have a set number of hours per week. If it was about the money why would they only want to settle for a 2.5% pay rise when they are being offered 10%? What I don’t understand is why the workers are being held responsible for risks to the business. Tony Gibson will get his huge salary each week no matter what and the Council wants a 12% return on capital no matter what. It is the wharfies who are expected to pay the price each week if business is down. Under any other business regime, the owner is the one who takes the risk, not the workers!
“As for politicians saying that we should not get involved, what a load of crap. This dispute became political when Rodney Hide set up the appointments of the Board of Directors for the port…
“In 1951 there was a watershed strike involving wharfies. Today we are faced with another defining moment regarding employment rights in this country. Rest assured that if the wharfies lose then this right wing Government will see it as an endorsement to go ahead with the casualisation of hours and it will be another blow to the union movement, a movement that has for so long protected blue collar workers.”

January 20, 2012

#transphobictampons: It's Not Offensive, It's Oppressive

Kassie Hartendorp, Workers Party member and Queer Avenger.
At the end of 2011, an advertisement for Libra tampons was pulled from air after members from the queer community called out the company for its transphobia. Many argued that the company was sending a strong message to those who did not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth, that they were not as ‘authentic’ as their biological counterparts.
The issue was framed as being problematic for only a small amount of ‘oversensitive’ members of the trans community but the advertisement can be linked back to the way that negative images work to oppress many on the gender and sexuality spectrum.
Continue reading “#transphobictampons: It's Not Offensive, It's Oppressive”

January 19, 2012

Auckland event tonight: Victory To The Wharfies

Public meeting: How can we support the Auckland port workers?

Tonight 7:30pm
Trades Hall, 147 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland

January 19, 2012

Don’t Talk to Me About Sewing Machines, Talk to Me About Workers’ Rights! A Call to Action for Socialists from a revolutionary hooker

Greta de Graves
The question of how to relate to sex workers (in this article, I will use the term ‘sex worker’ to refer to workers in commercialised sexual encounters, including, but not limited to prostitutes, strippers, go-go dancers, and pornographic actors of all genders) has been a topic of contention for many Marxist and other radical activists, and the New Zealand left has not been exempt from this struggle. The rationales that I have heard as to why the left is often ambivalent towards sex worker struggles are diverse, ranging from “all commercialised sex is inherently sexist and politically incorrect – it is a tactical mistake to ‘normalise’ sex work” to “sex workers are unintelligent and non-political – it would be a waste of our time and energy to politically align ourselves with them.”
Such attitudes (voiced to me by experienced and hard-working activists) are in direct conflict to my experience as a sex worker. My experiences that lead me into the sex industry conformed to every sad stereotype prevalent in popular culture – I was left in a huge amount of debt at the break-up of an unhealthy relationship, and was struggling to come to terms with the suicide of a close friend. I experienced poor mental health and was unable to find work that would allow me to pay off my debts and fit in with my existing job and study. I felt depressed, un-attractive and had a low sex drive. I didn’t believe that anyone would ever love or even sexually desire me – a crazy, neurotic failure – ever again.
And then a friend told me that she was thinking of working as a prostitute – and it occurred to me “well, why couldn’t I do that?” While I had a fairly sheltered upbringing, I had always had a fascination with what I perceived to be the glamorous “underworld” that sex workers occupied. Of course, the reality proved to be far different. In my experience, the vast majority of consumers of commercial sex in New Zealand can only be described as normal. Of different races, different personalities, different apparent socio-economic and educational backgrounds, different ages, some married, some single, but none of them the type society would classify as “deviant,” or who would arouse suspicion in their friends, families and colleagues that they paid for sexual services.
Continue reading “Don’t Talk to Me About Sewing Machines, Talk to Me About Workers’ Rights! A Call to Action for Socialists from a revolutionary hooker”

January 18, 2012

On the party question

This article was first written for internal circulation. We publish it now in light of public discussions among Socialist Worker comrades, partly regarding the party question (Goodbye Lenin? and Towards Ecosocialism.)
On February the 4th 2011, in the lead-up to our partys’ first internal conference of the year, a cross-section of leading comrades posted a statement resigning from the Workers Party. This statement argued that communist ‘party-building’ is impossible in the present conditions. As this statement raises important questions of political line that confront many communist and radical groups, it is necessary to engage with it; ultimately, to justify the very existence of communist organisations.
As the statement asserts that our comrades’ resignations are driven by “bigger and deeper” problems, we will not go into the sordid details of the lead-up to this development. Rather, we will engage directly with the content of their statement, available here.
In short, our comrades assert that given the lack of a mass workers’ movement in New Zealand today, communist party-building is futile. In particular, this affects recruitment:
“Those conditions meant that recruiting workers and progressives into the organisation has been very difficult.”
Continue reading

January 18, 2012

The Dialectical Relationship between Work and Mental Health (Part 1)

This article is the first in a series by Polly Peek addressing the issues of work and mental health from a Marxist perspective. For more information on the concept of dialectics see http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm. In this article the term ‘mental health community’ refers to those people experiencing mental illness or distress, and ‘consumer’ refers to those using or having previously used psychiatric services.. The role work plays in the mental health of people experiencing mental illness is complex, with research on the topic appearing somewhat contradictory on the surface, the most prominent contradiction being whether work is overall beneficial or detrimental to well-being and recovery. Research suggests that employment, or engagement in meaningful contribution is a “critical component of the pathway to recovery” (Mental Health Commission, 2001, cited in Duncan and Peterson, 2007) and that the most significant employment challenge for people experiencing mental illness is overcoming structural barriers to attaining work. At the same time, other studies indicate that the correlation between work and wellness is not so clear-cut, and that the kinds of jobs most accessible to the mental health community are also those with the highest likelihood of decreasingwell-being and obstructing recovery. In approaching this conflict through a dialectical analysis, the question of interplay between work and mental health moves from one of ‘is work more beneficial or detrimental to recovery and wellbeing’ to one of ‘how can the contradictions of employment’s simultaneous facilitation and eroding of wellness be resolved’. Continue reading “The Dialectical Relationship between Work and Mental Health (Part 1)”

January 14, 2012

1000 a year die from work

According to new statistics from the Department of Labour:

Every year:

Workplace injuries are killing about 100 people
More than 700 people die prematurely from work-related illness or disease
More than 200,000 people are seriously harmed (this corresponds to 12 injuries for every 100 workers)¹
There are more than 17,000 new cases of work-related disease, with between 2,500 – 5,500 classed as severe
Construction, agriculture, forestry, manufacturing and fishing consistently have above average fatal and major injury rates – accounting for approximately 37% of all ACC claims.²

Of those 200,000 serious injuries

The manufacturing sector has the highest number of work-related injuries
The highest injury-incidence rates are in the mining industry, construction industry, and agriculture, forestry and fishing sector
Sprains and strains are by far the most frequent injury (90,000 claims), followed by open wounds (37,000 claims)
An estimated 50% of injuries result in impairment, and 6% in permanent impairment.³

Death or injury on the worksite has been a constant battle between workers and bosses. This has existed going back to the first developments of capitalism in New Zealand, where a group of Bay of Islands Maori in 1821 staged the first strike, demanding “for their labour in money as was the case in England, or else in gunpowder.” or Samuel Parnell, a carpenter who on arrival in New Zealand in 1840 refused to work longer than an eight hour day.⁴ Continue reading “1000 a year die from work”